ALL-GRAIN FEEDING

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 55, 6 March 1937, Page 25

ALL-GRAIN FEEDING

AN ENGLISH ADVOCATE

Mr. W. M. Golden is well known to most, English poultry enthusiasts, and he dearly loves a good argument. His strains of Rhode Island Reds have won very regularly in the egg-laying trials at Home for the past decade, and it is almost ten years since , the first importations of .his stock were made to this country by Mr. G. N. Bell, a stud breeder and judge residing in the Manawatu. Below is a report of Mr. Gol'den's remarks which has appeared in "Poultry," England, and readers will appreciate, the soundness of his remarks. It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Golden is a general farmer, and .that.his fowls have complete free range over grass paddocks. It is doubtful'if Mr. Golden has had much. experience of the intensive system of keeping layers. He has always decried modern methods, dry-mash feeding, and the like, and he has not made any serious attempt to produce show birds. His. original Reds that came to this country were good layers of .large dark brown eggs, but they were not good coloured or typed Reds. No doubt improvements have been made of more recent years, and more of his stock has since reached both Australia and New Zealand. One of the chief troubles of our feeding methods today is that our birds are never really hungry, and so their digestive, organs are not thoroughly rested. We'all. appreciate, the value of starvation in disposing;of poisonous matters, and it is a wise breeder that periodically; allows his. prospective breeding hens to go- really hungry at this time of the year. Confined birds cannot be treated in this manner nearly so easily as those that have free range. The following is the report of Mr. Golden's remarks, which' were-made at- the East Sussex poultry conference recently:—

Mr,. Golden said that all his breeding hens were, fed; on' grain only for at least "four months prior to the breeding "season, He used barley, dari, peas, hemp, whole maize, and oats. His staple grain, however, was always wheat, the other ingredients being used in small proportions.

Grain feeding greatly increased the activity of the birds, and was a factor in controlling grass consumption.

Mr. Golden also mentioned an experiment which a neighbour of his had carried out with 500 birds, two-thirds pullets and the remainder hens. JSfothing but grain was fed, and the flock averaged 155 eggs a bird over the year. Production costs had been less than with mash, and a very high standard of health was maintained.

He contended that it was mainly because we do not recognise the value of simple, plain, fresh foods that our health and the health of our birds suffer. The importance of natural foods in relation to health cannot be over-estimated.

In the winter months when the grass was losing its feeding value he used a variety of fresh, green foods, including cabbages, savoys, onions, swedes, kale, and carrots. These, together with the use of silica grit, which has a nutritive as well as a functional value, were an important factor in maintaining health.

: Mi-; Golden quoted from a paper read to the British Medical Association by Major-General Sir Robert MacCarrison,. of the Indian Medical Service. The paper stated:—

"It is only in recent years that the important relations of certain foods essential to structional and functional efficiency of the mechanisation of the body have received due attention.

"The study of these relations has led to a new conception of the causes and the origin of diseases, a conception which might be summed up in the sequence: Faulty-food leads to faulty nutrition, faulty, structure, which leads to faulty health, which leads to disease."

This-sequence should be carefully studied' by the poultry industry today.